Attention citizens! It's time to wake up and recognize a new threat taking aim at the very heart
of our American lifestyle. For years, we have been quite content to be a country on the move.
The freedom to work hard and to stuff our faces as quickly as humanly possible seems to be our
birth right, right? That's why we invented Fast Food! But now, our whole fast way of life is
under attack.

This threat is called the Slow Food Movement, and it's gaining support among people who believe
that fast food and fast lives are fast spinning out of our control. So what's the best way to
combat this obsession with speed? Why, with Slow Food. "Slow Food is food that rediscovers the flavors and original cooking
techniques that only personal attention can achieve." Hey, even in the busiest life
there comes a time when you have to stop and smell the cheese, according to the Slow Food
Official Manifesto, which you can read at
http://www.slowfood.com.

According to the Slow Food propaganda:"We are enslaved by speed and have all succumbed to the same
insidious virus: Fast Life Homo Sapiens should rid himself of speed before it reduces him to a
species in danger of extinction."

The Slow Food movement started as a humorous protest of fast food's proliferation around the
globe, but since then it's developed into a major movement trying to save the world's unique
food products, items that take time and craftsmanship to create and thus might be lost in
the globalization shuffle.

Fast food is hardly on its way out, but Slow Food seems to also be here to stay.
Today, Slow Food's headquarters in Bra, Italy employs about 200 people. Approximately
650,000 Slow Food members live in some 45 countries around the world, and there are
65 chapters in the United States expounding the philosophy of thinking globally but eating locally.
The concept of Slow Food has grown into The Slow Cities movement, in which whole towns
commit to maintaining and improving the quality of life for their citizens.